This is one of my regulars, the whole family loves it, and it almost cooks itself, there are times when I have the chance to spend time on a meal, but this one can be ready in about 30 minutes if I’m speedy!

I use my big soup pot, and like my basic tomato soup recipe here, I can start it well ahead of time.

The basic recipe calls for:

Arborio rice (you can use short grain rice too, but it doesn’t seem to hold it’s shape so well..)

vege stock

garlic and/or an onion (shallots are really nice too)

spices, I often use cumin, fennel is good, as are black cumin seeds and mustard seeds.

You can use any number of veges that you might have at hand, we had loads of carrots last week so I made a risotto with a couple of grated and finely chopped carrots, you can use mushrooms (just chop finely, toss them in to cook with the garlic and spices) sliverbeet or spinach, tomatoes, fresh or canned, fresh tomatoes are really good if you chop them and gently mix them through just before you serve up..  Walnuts are divine in risotto, I will add some early on with the rice, and sprinkle them on over the top to serve… YUM.  Fresh herbs and a squeeze of lime of if you don’t have lime, lemon is good too.

You might have noticed I get a bit out of hand with the olive oil, I pour a fair amount into my biggest cooking pot, add finely chopped or grated garlic (you can also add or only use onions, but we love garlic) and the spices.  This you can do in the morning and leave till the evening, all the spices and garlic infuse into the oil and it smells lovely…

When you’re ready to go, just lightly cook off the garlic and spices, remove from heat and add the rice, I usually go for a cup, this makes plenty for the four of us (two big people and two little ones) as well as some left over for lunches.  Stir the rice through the oil, garlic and spices, until the rice is coated, then add twice the amount of stock, so if one cup of rice, two cups of vege stock, I like to have a little hot water at hand just incase, also worth noting, some veges will have higher amounts of water, like tomatoes, so just see how it goes.

I use this stock, it’s the only one I can get that has no msg or palm oil!

So, add your stock, lid on, and bring to the boil, I give it a quick stir as it can stick, then drop the temp right down to low, lid on…

In theory you ought to leave it with the lid on while it gently fluffs up, this takes about 10-15 minutes (I usually check in every 5 minutes and give a gentle stir as mine tends to stick).

This is a good time to add any chopped veges or nuts, I like to wash and reserve greens like silverbeet, rocket etc and toss them in at the end.

Sprinkle veges on to and stir through, or leave all rustic on top if you serve up in the pot!

This is so good, I sometimes add a half a cup or so of just cook lentils and stir them in before serving, a little extra protein and colour.

Woha, this was good, a vegan cheezecake, with frozen feijoa sauce… all raw, ALL good.

I’ve made a number of variations on this recipe, a berry cheezecake, and have found that it barely needs sweetener, I use about half a cup of honey in the cashew cheeze, and it’s plenty, with the fruity sauce (this was made with scooped out feijoa’s frozen overnight then defrosted and blended before pouring deliciously over the set cake…) you really don’t need much honey/sugar/nectar.

Off for an adventure.

So what was this most precious thing that Luna was running to show me?

Oh yes, a “Tiny mushroom!”

Found somewhere right over there…

That wasn’t the only one either.

So much to discover at Cornwall Park.  Luna declared (after Autumn Equinox dinner, which included candles) “Today was the best day!”

Kauri bark and gum,

Lichen!

Om nom nom, risotto with lentils, carrot and walnuts, accompanied by roast kumara and potato, topped with fresh basil…

Hope you had a good equinox.

Kimchi is SO good.  It is also SO expensive, really.

I’m into fermented foods these days, and have made my own batch or kimchi, I made some years ago with a Korean friend, and dithered a bit in finding a substitute for fish sauce, which was a key ingredient.

My recipe is simple, and as I really wanted to make it and then eat it as soon as possible I wilted the cabbage for only a few hours.  Recipes I had found involved anything from 45 minutes to 24 hours or salting the cabbage, and sometimes even longer…

Yum!

So, here’s what I used:

One smallish daikon radish, peeled, and sliced into half circles.

Three pak choi cabbages, washed and chopped in lengths of about 3-2cms.  I wanted Chinese cabbage but was not able to get one, this worked out ok, though I think pak choi is slightly bitter.

One medium onion, sliced.

These I wilted with lots of salt, in one of my biggest soup pots.  I spread a layer of chopped cabbage and sprinkled with about a teaspoon of rock salt, another layer and sprinkled with salt, and so on till the pot was full.  I did the same thing to the chopped daikon and sliced onion, I managed to fit it all in one big pot, with a plate between each different food layer, the salt needs to be washed off again, so it’s easier if they are not all mixed in at first.

While you let this sit, I waited about two hours, you will see quite a lot of water come away, you can make up the spicy paste!  Yum!

I used:
About 2/3 tablespoons of both (fresh) crushed garlic and (bought) crushed ginger and two tablespoons (bought) chili paste, this spicy goodness I combined with about 1/4 cup lemon juice and a cup of tamari sauce.  I was keen to use all fresh garlic, ginger and chili as you can taste the preservatives, but due to small people’s needs there were some time constraints, next time I’ll do fresh.

Now, maybe an hour or two has passed, but maybe even 24 hours has gone by, if you can wait that long!

It’s time to rinse off your salted ingredients, under running water rinse as carefully as you can, the veges become quite salty and wilted, so don’t rush this stage.

Then, all you do is get the pile of veges and mix in your spicy juicy paste mixture, go on, use both hands.

So yummy, you can sit down and eat a load now, you can scoop the mix into those glass jars you have boiled for the last five minutes, staying about one cm from the brim, topping up with any remaining liquid, and share it around, or keep it chilled and eat it yourself!

I made a couple to give away and placed two of the sliced half circles of daikon at the top, just before I topped up the juice and screwed on the lid.

Notes:

I found the pak choi could have had more than 2 hours with the salt, also, there was still a bit of a salty residue on the leaves, so I’d probably take more care rinsing next time too.  Two tablespoons of chili paste made the kimchi fairly mild, so up it if you like it hot.  This recipe makes quite a lot of liquid, which we like to use on rice, noodles etc. you can add less tamari if you wish.

I never liked tomato soup until I made my own, and it’s so easy!

This recipe is vegan and can be adapted to make a tomatoey base for pastas, pizzas and other soups like minestrone.

The ingredients are basic, you need olive oil, a couple of cans (maybe about 2 – 4 small cans 400gms or there abouts) or a couple of kilograms of fresh tomatoes – you’ll need to skin them (perhaps by dropping them into a large pot of rapidly boiling water to loosen the skin) a half or cup or so of tomato paste (but this works ok without it) and vegetable stock.  You can use garlic, onions and spices, I like to use garlic and some cumin.

I add red lentils to this (along with a slash of molasses and some salt) and use it as a base for pasta sauces, soups, pizzas.  If you blend it all up it’s a great tomatoey lentiley paste/sauce if you prefer a smooth texture, or have people who are scared of lentils.

Sometimes it’s more practical for me to start these meals at lunch or earlier if I’m out for the day.  I just chop all the garlic (or here I’ve left them whole as we are getting to the smaller bulbs now..) and drop them in to a pot which has some olive oil (enough to generously cover the bottom of the pot).  If you are leaving this for the day or even and hour, put a lid on it!

When the time comes to prepare you’ll swoon over the deliciousness of the garlic as the infused flavours waft out when you lift the lid…  I added my spices, about a teaspoon of each?  As much as I can grab in a few fingers, cumin seed and red mustard seed.  I like to cook the garlic slowly, so it sweats and the spices eventually start to sizzle.

All the while get some water boiling for your stock, if that’s how yours comes, I use a powdered stock and tend to add it to taste, maybe about 4 cups goes into this soup.  Pour in to the garlic and spices your tomato paste, stir it through, add your canned or fresh, skinned and chopped tomato mix, I like to heat it through and reduce it a bit.

But you don’t have to, you can just put it all into the big pot with your stock, warm it through, cook for a few minutes, gently stirring while you find some pretty bowls to serve it in, and pull out the fresh baked bread…

Taste it and maybe season with a little salt, sprinkle on some fresh parsley or other fresh herbs, maybe some cracked pepper…

And enjoy!

Oh and this freezes really well, so fill your freezer and forget about the tinned stuff!

So I’m getting all vegan on it foodwise these days, and I’m really enjoying experimenting with some of my most used foods.  For me a vegan lifestyle is about compassion, living sustainably and healthy choices, in New Zealand we enjoy a wide range of foods to choose from, and we are also carrying this legacy of dairy farming, which I suppose, people like me are a tired of.

Certainly becoming a parent makes a person a huge target for marketing, and the dairy and meat board here in NZ do not hold back.  It’s about getting mums and dads hooked into the sales pitch, so the kids get tied in as young as possible.  Not so sure?  Get a hold of The Politics of Breastfeeding, then see what you think..

But anyway enough of the rant already!  My big thing that was getting me down was not having a reliable and tested butter substitute – primarily for baking – as well as spreading on my homemade bread.  I have been wanting to get away from vege oil based spreads, though I was using Olivio, it is still very processed and not a healthy option.

So I was all but skipping around the house when I came across a recipe for futter – faux butter, made from coconut oil (I worked with about 300gms of deodorized organic oil), a pinch (and I mean a pinch) of turmeric and about half a teaspoon of salt.  Melted enough to combine, once cooled, viola!  Faux butter!  Fantastic!

I now use it for spreading on fresh bread, in baking (or just use coconut oil – I found using less than the amount of butter called for in the recipe works well) it makes good scones, just takes a bit longer to work in when you’re crumbling it into the dry ingredients.

I had a go at my first raw vegan cheezecake yesterday, it was easy, but taxed my puny stick blender somewhat.

I’ve been keen to make one for ages, and needed to have all the ingredients together at one time, good coconut oil was proving tricky to find (the not too pricey organic kind..) and well, if we have massive amounts of delicious raw cashews at hand we eat them in nearly everything!  Not to mention dates!

So, you want to know how it’s made?  It’s like this, blend until fairly smooth (my blender could only manage smooth to chunky, which was fine with me) for the crust,

1 1/2 cups of almonds

Small pinch of salt

1 cup of dates (or honey, but this would be WAY too sweet I think and not vegan?  Depends on who you ask.)

Press into a tin or dish, I used a spring form tin, refridgerate for about an hour.

For the Cheese:

3 cups of cashews (pre soak in a bowl of water for about an hour)

1 cup of lemon juice, and a good bit of zest, I used four lemons for this

1 cup honey or about 3/4 cup agave syrup or sugar

1 cup of coconut oil (warmed until liquid, you can do this in a cup in a pot of hot water)

1 teaspoon or so of vanilla

To make the cheese, blend the cashews, lemon, honey, coconut oil and vanilla. Blend until smooth and adjust to taste., and pour the cheese mixture onto the crust.  We added frozen blueberries as these are a treat for Luna at the moment, I just sprinkled them mostly in the center and pressed them gently into the cheese.

I put the cake in the freezer for a couple of hours then transferred it to the fridge.  Let sit at room temperature for 30 mins or so before serving.

I found it really very sweet, so would use less sweetener, honey, sugar, agave, whatever you prefer.

Enjoy!

Choice of dish ideally corresponds to fruit size.

Luna spent some time with this, using a soup spoon of course.

This is one of my best and simplest soups…  it’s really just about the mushrooms and all that garlic!  (Really big mushrooms).

You want some too?   Grab about three good sized large flat mushrooms, like the size of your hand large if you can find them fresh, a head of garlic (if you’re not so big on garlic, just a few less, maybe four cloves?), olive oil and vege stock.

I pour a generous splash of olive oil in my pot, (use less if you’re no so keen on slightly oily soups – it gets that green sheen on top…) and grate my garlic in, you can chop it or crush it.  These days I start making dinner at lunch and so I leave this to sit and infuse while I read to and sleep the kids.

Meantime, chop the mushrooms finely.  If you’ve also done the oily garlic infusion, doesn’t it smell divine?  Slowly, like on the lowest temp setting, cook the garlic, stirring gently, this takes a while, then..

Toss in the chopped ‘shrooms, again cook on low for ages, until they reach a really wilted state…  and smell really good.

Then I add my stock, I like this organic one, and it takes about 4 cups, see?

Use extra hot water if needed, and do add stock to taste.  Cook slowly, I just let it simmer, then dish up!  Soo good.

Make sure you’ve made some good bread to go with it!

Would you like some?  We get loads of limes whenever we see Rob’s parents, so what to do with them??  I love limes, and lime cordial is soo good.

You can make a cordial with lemons too, or tangelos?  Probably anything like these.

So here’s the recipe, it really is simple, and it was given to me by Rob’s aunt.

Wash your fruit, get a big pot with about 4 cups of water boiling.

When I make this with lemons I use 3 cups of sugar, with limes, I use about 4 cups of sugar.

Also with lemons, I might use about 6, and limes, well, about 10 or 12?  The ones we get from Rob’s parent’s orchard are really good, super juicy and a good size.

While your water boils and the sugar dissolves, halve and juice your fruit, you need to drop the squeezed halves into the water sugar mix, reservingthe juice.

This needs to boil for about 10 minutes, I’ve boiled it longer and it’s also fine.

Strain into another big jug, add the juice, I get about 400mls from 12 limes, you can strain the juice if you don’t like the pulp, but I like it!

The recipe I use then calls for 1 teaspoon each of tartaric acid, citric acid and epsom salts.  I have made with all three, with tartaric and citric acids (when I couldn’t find my epsom salts) and then just with citric acid, and it has been fine, you need to store it in the fridge and at our house it seldom lasts longer than a week!

And that’s it, easy, you have a concentrate, dilute it to taste with ice, a ring of lime and enjoy!

We love it!